Virtual Private Networks (VPN) have become extremely popular and useful in today's global economy. Companies as well as governmental entities which have offices in different regions allow their employees to directly access their own private secured network domains using a hard cable, such as an Ethernet cable. It is also very common for a company to offer wireless connectivity (i.e. WiFi) to those who are able to access it, whereby a person with a laptop can access a wide area network, like the internet. Many of these companies also allow their employees to access the company's secured network domain using a VPN connection, whereby the VPN connection can be established using the wireless signal.
It often occurs that an employee who is logged into the secured network domain must switch between direct access and the VPN. In particular, the employee may have to undock her laptop from her office (terminating the direct access connection) and take it to a conference room where only a wireless connectivity signal is present. If the user wants to access the network domain while using the wireless signal, she will have to initiate the VPN process and again log into the network domain. This can be cumbersome and time consuming.
What is needed is a system and method which automatically switches between direct access and VPN access configurations while maintaining access to the network domain.